Risingtide

Thank you again for sharing your thoughts. You brought up things I hadn't considered. I hadn't considered that Alma was speaking to two audiences: the poor, and the proud. That would go along way to explain the urging to "search the scriptures" Your point that Zenos and Zenock were still admired among the Zoramites and quoting them justified Alma's message to the to both groups.

From what I know about literacy in the ancient world, which I admit isn't much, the poorest were generally illiterate. I speculated that the outcast Zoramites would be illiterate, because of their poverty. That Alma was asking this group of people to search the scriptures when I imagined that would be totally beyond the expectations of of persons familiar with the abilities of the poor is what caused my concern. None of us know the rates of literacy in Zoramite society. There could be an unexplored explanation as to why Alma expected these outcast poor to have access to scriptures and the ability to read them. Or maybe he didn't really expect this of the poor. Maybe it was just a turn pf phrase, or it was written as council for us in our own time. I don't know. I've read that passage so many times without it troubling me. I guess I've been influenced by Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel which deals with the progression of civilizations. Thank you Benjamin for taking the time to share your insights. That was generous of you.

It would be interesting to know if there is a consensus among the professors of anthropology at BYU about the degree of literacy in the populations of people about or before the time of Christ.

Yes, the same thought occurred to me. Thanks rpn. Maybe Alma felt compelled to urge outcast Zoramites to "search the scriptures" for our edification, and not so much for his audience.

In Alma 33, Alma urges the outcast Zoramites to search the scriptures in order to see they need not the Zoramite worship services in order to worship God. It's widely believed that literacy in the world at this time was very rare, and especially rare with the poor, and personal copies of scripture would be even more rare. How could a person search the scriptures if they had no access to scriptures and if they lacked the ability to read? In researching literacy rates of jews at the time of Christ I'm seeing sub one percent to 3 percent by those who study the subject. This question may have been brought up in the past on this board. Can you help me made sense of this? I guess we could speculate that the Nephite/Zoramites were unusually advanced in literacy for a people at this time in history, and these societies dedicated an unusual amount of labor and resources to copying scripture so it was widely available.